11.09.09 Croatia to Serbia

Left Croatia early and hit the road south. Motor roads are nice in Croatia except you have to pay a lot in toll. For the first 3 hours we were racing with the Italians and Germans going home from holiday. Hit the border to Serbia, these guys are thieves, had to pay 110 Euro for extra insurance at the border, the passport control was only interested in where the car came from and kept our passports until we paid the insurance. Beautiful motor roads but you pay toll all the time and since you pay toll you can even overtake the police cars, nobody seems to stop you and everybody drives as fast as they wants. After a few hours we felt like we were getting close to India with cycles, goat and people on the motor roads. Belgrade is a dump and the motor road goes right though it, and we did not even feel like stopping there. On the brighter side they have the most amazing tank station where everything is high tech, with Pizza, Cappuccino etc. we can really see that the people are really poor here and that we are in the south of Europe. These assholes and thieves even charge us extra at the toll gates when they see it is a foreign car. The landscape really flattened out and the houses seemed worse than Margundi but beautiful even though. Daniel slept most of the way. We drove over 1000 km and reached a nice place called Pirot by the Serbian border to Bulgaria. Checked into at pretty o.k. hotel at 6 pm and enjoyed Raki and beer for dinner. There guys here have a tough time understanding English so we had to help the cook by pointing out what meat we wanted for dinner. All said and done a very good meal. Tomorrow morning we are leaving to Bulgaria and then to Turkey. The car is fine and she drives like a bomb.

I dag kørte vi ca. 1000 km fra Istrien i Kroatien via Zagreb og Beograd til en lille by som hedder Pirot tæt på grænsen til Bulgarien, det var meningen at vi ville køre via Grækenland til Tyrkiet, men i dag ændrede vi planen og regner med at køre ind i Tyrkiet i morgen via Bulgarien. Istrien har et helt specielt landskab, masser af klipper og meget tørt. Kroatien er generelt et kønt land at køre i synes vi. Da vi kom til Serbien ja så kom vi helt klart tættere på Indien, nu stopper folk rask væk langs siden af motorvejen og vi så sågar en cyklist på motorvejen, men hold op hvor har de nogle high tech rastepladser super moderne og så med ca 5 km mellemrum. Serbien er mange steder meget fattigt, husene er generelt forfaldne og bilerne ligeså, vi har aldrig set så mange motorstop på motorvejen. Motorvejen går lige igennem Beograd, mange steder ikke noget særlig kønt syn.
Daniel præsterede at sove det meste af vejen, men så gik dagen jo med det.
Serbien er godt nok dyrt. Vi startede med at betale 110 Euro i forsikring, den gælder så en måned, men vi regner kun med at bruge den 1 dag. Desuden har vi vel betalt ca. 15 Euro i motorvejs afgift ved siden af, så i dag har vi ikke råd til at spise. Det gjorde vi så alligevel, vi fik dejlig aftensmad i noget som lignede en bryllupshal, dekorerede stearin lys og rosen duge. Vi måtte selv med ud i køkkenet for at se hvilket kød vi ville have pga sprogvanskelighederne.